Wibaux County Museum Complex
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The Town of Wibaux and the County of Wibaux are both named for Pierre Wibaux, a Frenchman who gave up opportunities in his family’s textile business to seek his fortune in the cattle industry of the American northwest.
Arriving in the area in 1883, a young man of 27, Pierre established his ranch headquarters, the W-Bar, 12 miles north of town on Beaver Creek. He ran cattle on the open range in an area covering nearly 70,000 acres. Among his western friends were Teddy Roosevelt, who was then ranching about 30 miles east of Wibaux in the Dakota badlands, and the Marquis de Mores, a fellow Frenchman who had undertaken a grandiose meatpacking and meat marketing enterprise in Dakota.
Many ranchers were devastated by the hard, cattle-killing winter of 1886-87, but Wibaux remained optimistic about the future of cattle raising on the plains. He sought additional financing and bought up the surviving livestock, knowing they would be a hardy base for his expanded herds. By 1889, he had accumulated more than 40,000 head of livestock and employed 25 to 30 cowboys.
The town which had been known as Mingusville, one of the largest cattle shipping points on the Northern Pacific Railroad, was
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Wibaux County Museum Complex